It’s odd to see such a well-researched, engrossing documentary focusing on the trial of legendary local crime lord James “Whitey” Bulger end with the Boston Globe going to press on the day the verdicts came in. Anyone from these parts knows that the Whitey saga was bread and butter for readers of the Boston Herald – and columnist Howie Carr, too; now that Bulger’s 16 years as a fugitive on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, along with the 2-year buildup to the trial have come to a close, Carr must sometimes wonder why he still gets up in the morning.

But then, why give a notorious, now-convicted murderer the satisfaction of the type of tabloid look at his misdeeds that he’d probably want, when prolific Oscar-nominated filmmaker Joe Berlinger (director of “Brother’s Keeper” and the “Paradise Lost” trilogy) has given us something better: a movie that raises more questions than it answers, one that questions the depths of corruption on all sides of the law in this messy case.

As Globe columnist Kevin Cullen (co-author of the book, “Whitey Bulger,” along with Globe reporter Shelley Murphy, who also appears) sees it during one of the many talking-head interviews that take up the bulk of the movie’s running time, “Whitey Bulger is a vicious, venal murderer, but he was enabled by the FBI, the FBI was enabled by the Justice Department, and to this day, the Justice Department, as far as I’m concerned, was engaged in a cover-up, to minimize the extent of FBI corruption.” David Boeri, senior reporter for WBUR, echoes Cullen, talking about the “lawlessness of the government,” and the “circle of shit in Boston.”

One figure who Berlinger repeatedly loops back to is FBI Special Agent John Connolly, Jr., who’s now serving 40 years for the second-degree murder of John Callahan in Miami. Like Bulger, Connolly also grew up in South Boston’s Old Harbor Housing Project.

Dick Lehr, a former Globe reporter and co-author of both “Black Mass” (the movie version of which is shooting in and around Boston right now, with Johnny Depp playing Bulger) and “Whitey,” talks of Connolly’s “unholy alliance with Bulger,” so it’s especially ironic to see snippets of Connolly in an FBI training video from 1983.

Connolly, who maintains that Bulger, — the region’s deadliest organized crime ring — was his longtime informant, states in the video that “these are our most important assets that we have, informants. They’re the name of the game. You’re gonna get friendly with them, and you’re going to like them, but you never can forget who you work for,” adding, “you probably wouldn’t want to target a boss…”

Page 2 of 2 - James E. McDonald, Connolly’s defense attorney in the 2008 Miami murder trial, talks of what he says was a larger scapegoating case that was made against Connolly.

“There were a dozen guys they could have gone after,” Cullen says during one of the few interviews in the film that doesn’t find an interviewee behind the wheel of a car (Berlinger does like his forward momentum, metaphorically and otherwise), “and the idea that John Connolly was the only guy they convicted in all of this” institutionalized corruption? “It’s a joke.”

But not for the families of the murder victims, who Berlinger dedicates the film to, as well as giving a number of them screen time to tell their stories, and air their frustrations.

As for Bulger, who we hear during phone conversations with his defense attorney J.W. Carney Jr., and who’s currently serving two consecutive life terms (plus 5 years) for the murders of 11 of the 19 people he was accused of killing, there’s nothing worse than being called a rat. “He’s ok with being called a crook… a murderer… but not an informant,” says Fred Wyshak, Assistant U.S. Attorney and a Bulger prosecutor. “Where he came from, that’s the worst thing that you can be.”

“With the strategy he’s given us,” Carney says during the lead-up to Bulger’s trial, “he knows he’s going to be found guilty, but he doesn’t care. It’s his opportunity to tell people that he was never an informant; that our Federal Government is more corrupt in law enforcement than anyone ever imagined… and he wants people to know it.”

But then, Bulger doesn’t testify at his trial, prompting Patricia Donahue, wife of Michael Donohue, one of Bulger’s unintended victims (he was in the wrong car at the wrong time) to yell at Bulger during the trial: “Coward!”

Coward, informant, rat. Call him what you will, he’s a fascinating figure, one who’s rotting behind bars. Still, this offers little solace to the families he destroyed, something Berlinger clearly communicates among all of the unanswered questions.